I love when shows with ensemble casts break up their team into different pairs and have them spend the episode together. It allows for an interesting reshuffling and establishes relationships, tests friendships, and makes for fun and fresh new dynamics every week.

Scorpion is pretty good at that, and with a team of such fun and quirky characters, most of whom suffer when it comes to interpersonal relationships, it is always an interesting recipe for an episode that promises big character moments and pushing relationships forward.

This week’s case had the team finally working with the Department of Energy again (after Walter lost them the last job) and replacing parts in wind turbines. The job goes perfectly fine, until Paige and Happy take the gondola for the ride back down and the cable snaps, leaving the two ladies swinging in midair, literally hanging on for dear life. With Sly and Cabe on the ground and Walter and Toby still in the turbine, it’s a race against time, gravity, and the forces of nature to rescue the two ladies.

The — eventually successful — rescue attempt involved a makeshift hot air balloon, a sniper rifle, and electrocuting the ladies. That last one coming only second to that time they actually killed Cabe in order to rescue him.

The case and the rescue mission were secondary to the selected pairings and how the ordeal affected their relationships. The main team struggles this week are split. One is between the men and one is between the women. The men take the lighter, less dramatic one, as Walter, Cabe, and Sylvester battle for who deserves the title of best man at Toby and Happy’s wedding (even though Toby repeatedly makes it clear that he will not be picking a best man). For the entire episode, the three men try to prove their value, how much Toby means to them, and why they would be deserving of that title. Even as Toby and Walter are in the turbine — fighting to keep the women they love from plunging to their deaths, and Cabe and Sly are on the ground, figuring a way to bring them down — the battle continued.

Happy and Paige, on the other hand, go through a more dramatic struggle. Excited that her friends are getting married, Paige offers to help Happy prepare for the wedding, but Happy rejects her offer repeatedly. And when Paige confronts her about it, telling her that she’d assumed that over the past few years, the two women had grown close, Happy dismisses that, saying that they’re only “friend-ish,” that she wouldn’t go as far as calling them friends. Now we know Happy has trouble communicating her feelings and that she’s never really had friends, but still, that was pretty harsh.

And with the two of them stuck in a gondola, suspended in mid-air, with their lives on the line, there’s really no place for them to go. They are stuck together with that elephant in the gondola. As things get worse, Paige tries to get their mind off things, using the wedding prep as a distraction. But that only makes things worse. Putting her foot in her mouth, yet again, telling Paige that she’s a genius, not a cheerleader — which Paige takes to mean that she, Paige, is just a dumb cheerleader. And that just makes the situation worse between the two.

But at the end of the day, when they’re grabbing on the cable and swinging in mid-air, it’s Paige’s cheerleading experience that rescues the two. And ultimately, there is nothing like a near-death experience to clear the air and bring two people closer. They realize that there are things more important in life than little arguments, especially between friends, and it is the differences between them that make them stronger.

At the beginning of the episode, Sylvester is at the Warlock’s Chest, being honored for his valiant struggle to keep the place open,. He is presented with the Stone of Valor — something he wears proudly for the rest of the day. And it also comes in handy when they try to buy a sniper rifle and the owner of the gun shop turns out to be Erhlic of the Desert Dwellers, at Sly’s service. He ignores the wait period required to purchase the rifle and allows them to have it, after refusing Cabe and his badge.

Grateful for Cabe’s help during his campaign, Sylvester invites him over to The Warlock’s Chest so that he too can be honored with the Cape of Windsor. When Cabe turns down Sly’s invitation, that breaks the young’s man heart. While Cabe was grateful for it, he failed to see that, failed to see how much he had hurt Sylvester in rejecting his offer. Cabe was under the impression that Sly was only doing it to pay him back and it takes Happy, of all people, to explain to him that he was doing it to be his friend and sometimes if someone is your friend, you let them do stuff for you because it's not about you, it's about them, and them feeling good about being a good friend.

A valuable lesson Happy herself had to learn the hard way. So Cabe goes and joins the knights and the roundtable for the honoring and the game.

And as for the great battle of the potential best men, Toby surprises everyone at the end of the day when he announces that the person he is choosing is the one person without whom he would have never managed to even get together with Happy in the first place. Toby picks a Best Ma’am. He picks Paige. And I personally love the relationship between these two, so I am looking forward to this.

One of the closing images of the episode is a little cute Waige moment. After accepting her role as Best Ma’am, and after Happy announces she’s picking the guys as her Dudes of Honor, the two are left alone in the garage and offer to help each other with their respective tasks. The scene closes on the two of them sitting closely at Paige’s desk, preparing and planning their friends’ wedding. Maybe that’s good practice for when it’s their turn? Waige fans can only hope so!